Time To Start Worrying About Our Levee System

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Occasionally, the blog dips into a pool of stories it classifies under the heading of One More Damn Thing. These consist of massive national problems that our politics, and the self-government that proceeds from them, ignore until the problem results in something happening that's bad enough to draw the attention of Jim Cantore, and to guarantee the arrival of Anderson Cooper on your front lawn. Generally, at the heart of these particular stories is the country's new implicit motto — America: We Won't Do Dick.

Today's entry is about the nation's levee system which, according to a terrific report by the AP, is pretty much falling apart from disuse and disrepair and horrendously inconsistent management.

Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states. Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region, in cities and towns big and small: Washington, D.C., and Sacramento Calif., Cleveland and Dallas, Augusta, Ga., and Brookport, Ill. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair. The problems are myriad: earthen walls weakened by trees, shrubs and burrowing animal holes; houses built dangerously close to or even on top of levees; decayed pipes and pumping stations.

Because I am not a levee specialist, I had absolutely no idea that local governments were responsible for upgrading the levees in their town that no longer came up to standards. (These are towns, many of them, that are shutting off streetlights and laying off cops because they can't afford either one of those peculiar luxuries.) Because I am not a levee specialist, I had absolutely no idea that, in some locations, the Army Corps Of Engineers allowed people to build what appear to be whole neighborhoods atop the levees.

Part of an 11.5-mile levee built to protect downtown Augusta, Ga., from the Savannah River was incorporated into a park featuring a brick walkway, lighting and landscaping. A townhouse subdivision and access road were built atop the levee, as were sections of a hotel, a church hall and a science museum. In Toledo, Ohio, some 1,500 homes, patios, stairs and other structures have been placed on the levee that runs along Lake Erie's Maumee Bay. ''You name it, it's out there,'' said Robert Remmers, a Corps levee safety program manager who oversees Toledo's system. Local officials say that in many cases the Corps allowed such incursions - or didn't object to them. Tom Robertson, a consulting engineer for Augusta, said the Corps signed off on the commercial buildings encroaching on its levee in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Corps knew about the townhouse development and did not formally approve it.

We, of course, would have been generally unaware of this latter problem until Anderson was standing there in his CNN rain-slicker as an entire block of flats went floating by behind him.

Pardon me if, in my ignorance, I seek to point out that this whole system seems a little nuts.

Local cities and towns can't afford to maintain the levees. It appears that the Corps Of Engineers can't, either. Naturally, there was an attempt to reform the system proposed in the Congress. Naturally, it went nowhere. Because, I don't know, THE DEFICIT! AUSTERITY!! THE CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX!!! AIEEEE!!!!

In 2009, a congressional advisory panel recommended that Congress invest in levees, create national levee programs and enact policies to increase awareness about the risks of flooding. But Congress has yet to adopt the group's report. In the meantime, experts are warning that aging and weak flood-control systems will likely face stiffer tests as climate change makes severe storms more common in the coming years.

You can't help but read this story in the context of the utterly absurd debate this week over whether or not, or how, the federal government should disburse relief money to the areas affected by superstorm Sandy. We ignore the existing problems until some untoward but completely predictable natural catastrophe detonates the problem in our face, and then we play political parlor games over nickel-and-diming the recovery efforts. If we go down in the flood, as the song goes, it'll be our fault.